Three-win week on road puts Wildcats on track for No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed

Arizona vaulted back into the No. 3 spot in the Associated Press Top 25 poll Monday, but there’s something different about it this time.

The Wildcats (22-2) are also now firmly in position for a No. 1 NCAA tournament seed.

Both Auburn (the previous AP No. 1) and Purdue (No. 3) lost last week, allowing the Wildcats to move up one notch from to No. 3, where they were for two weeks before losing 75-59 at UCLA on Jan. 25.

Auburn (23-2) remained above the Wildcats at No. 2, but in a tournament sense it doesn’t matter much: Top-ranked Gonzaga (21-2), Arizona and Auburn are all two-loss teams, with only subtle differences in their résumés, and all are projected No. 1 seeds at this point.

The only tricky part is that both Arizona and Gonzaga are in the West Region footprint, so one of them would get kicked out if they both finished on the one line.

As of now, Gonzaga and Arizona are 1-2 in the NET, Kenpom and Sagarin, indicating the Zags would stay in the West and the Wildcats would be sent to the South, where not surprisingly both ESPN and CBS have them projected as going.

The only difference in going to the South would be that second-weekend games will be played in San Antonio instead of San Francisco’s Chase Center, where the West Region Sweet 16 and Elite Eight games will be held. But Tucson is nearly equidistant from both cities anyway.

If both Gonzaga and Arizona finished with No. 1 seeds, it would not only avoid the possibility of UA coach Tommy Lloyd having to face his former program until the Final Four, but it would also be a historic tournament moment.

Only once since the NCAA began seeding all teams in 1979 have two teams come out of the West as No. 1 seeds: In 2000, Arizona earned the No. 1 seed in the West while Stanford became the No. 1 team in the South.

However, both Arizona and Stanford lost in the second round to No. 8 seeds that season, illustrating the danger of expecting the tournament to play out to form, even for No. 1 seeds.

Lloyd acknowledged that reality last Thursday, when asked if he and Gonzaga staffers discussed the possibility of facing each other in the tournament during their dinner together at a Spokane restaurant last Wednesday evening.

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“I’d guess, this year, if we had to play, we probably both be pretty happy to still be alive” at that point of the tournament, Lloyd said. “It would obviously be great.”

Mathurin back to form

USC’s Drew Peterson beat out UA’s Bennedict Mathurin and Cal’s Jordan Shepherd for Pac-12 Player of the Week, but Mathurin returned to the sort of form that has put him square in the mix for the conference player of the year.

As Pac-12 defenses began to throw more tricks at him and external expectations grew, Mathurin averaged just 12.5 points over an eight-game stretch from Jan. 13 to Feb. 5, with his high of 16 points during that period coming at UCLA, when he made just 2 of 16 two-point shots.

But Mathurin averaged 21.0 points over UA’s three wins last week while shooting 60% from the field. He had 25 points on Saturday at Washington while shooting 8 of 11 from the field.

“He’s a developing player,” Lloyd said. “Benn got off to slow start then had a great stretch, then maybe hit a little bit of a rough patch.

“That’s normal. I told him, `That little time you struggled is so valuable. You need to kind of embrace it and not be afraid of it and you’ll be better for it.’ And he’s kind of obviously come out on the other side.”

While Mathurin led the Wildcats in wins at ASU, WSU and Washington, Peterson scored 27 points on 9-for-13 shooting in the Trojans’ defeat of UCLA, when Isaiah Mobley was not available. Peterson averaged 19.5 points over two games last week, also counting a USC win over Pacific.

Shepherd, meanwhile, also had a strong case after leading the Bears to a road sweep in Oregon by averaging 24.0 points and shooting 50%. Shepherd scored 33 points at Oregon, the most ever by a Pac-12 player this season.

Also Monday, Stanford’s Harrison Ingram picked up the Pac-12 Freshman of the Week award for the sixth time this season. Ingram averaged 14.3 points, 6.0 rebounds and 5.0 assists over games against UCLA, Oregon and Oregon State.